PAUL AVRICH water, and he calls for a halt to the headlong rush into an urban industrial society,which, he predlcts, will spell « the jolnt collapse of our clvilizatlon and the West's in the crush and stink of a polluted earth. » Solzhenitsyn's distrust of parliamentary government is slmilarly traceable to the Slavophiles and Populists, who saw it as corrupt and alien lnstltutlon, manlpulated by opportunists and hypocrltes seeklng to safeguard their own interests at the expense of the worklng people. In his letter to the Soviet leaders of September 1973 he scorns Western democracy as a system that, like Bolshevism, is lacking in moral foundatlons. He calls instead for a benevolent government « based on genuine concessions and love on the part of the rulers, not only for themselves and those around them, but also for the people. and ali neighboring peoples too. » Solzhenltsyn's Slavophile orientation, his quest for Russia's salvation in its own unique historical traditions sets him sharply apart from many other Soviet dissldents who favor ;-; Western conception of democracy and constitutlonal freedom. To such men as Andrei Sakharov many of Solzhenitsyn's ideas, religious as well as political, seem outmoded and anachronistic, if not downright reactionary. His exaltation of rural values, hls profound religious conviction, and hls faith in technicai experts, that is, in the very « new class » of whom Bakunin and Machajski had warned, have alienated many wellwishers, both in Russia and in the West, who strongly admire him for his courage and lntegrity. The same is true of his criticisms of Ramsey Clark and Daniel Ellsberg as traitors to their country, as well as his sympathetic treatment of the Vlasovites, despite their collaboration with Hitler, as the unfortunate victims of Stalinist treachery. At times he has even echoed the Slavophile belief in a « good tsar, » the bearer of justlce and merey as opposed to the Stalinlst Antichrlst, who wm dellver the Russlan people from their persecution and suffering. In Nikita Khrushchev, on whose- tomb he laid a bouquet of flowers, he saw such a benevolent ruler, a sort of peasant tsar with hls earthy popular wit, whose reforms, says Solzhenitsyn, « were undoubtedly governed by genulne emotlon, by penitence and open-heartedness., MucH of thls 1s indeed dlsturbing. Solzhenitsyn's politlcal phllosophy, a mixture of SlavophUism, Populism, and ethlcal soclallsm wlth elements of technocracy and benevolent 112
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